ITALY: Butcher Stay Home

Italian headline writers found a welcoming name for 54-year-old Soviet Polit-burocrat Mikhail Suslov: “The Butcher of Budapest.” The butcher, accompanied by Russia’s ranking woman Communist, Ekaterina Furtseva, was on his way to Rome to lay down the line to the eighth congress of the Italian Communist Party, which until the events in Hungary claimed 2,130,000 members (probable current membership: less than 1,500,000). Suslov is the least known of the top half dozen Kremlin leaders, but what is known of him is not endearing: he is a flinty, ascetic Stalinist, a specialist on the satellites, who arrived in Budapest shortly before the Soviet crackdown began.

Suslov was already en route from Moscow to Rome when Italian Interior Minister Fernando Tambroni announced that Suslov would not be admitted to Italy. “The ministry.” explained the official Demo-Christian newspaper Il Popolo, “wishes to avoid demonstrations of dislike or perhaps of open hostility to Suslov’s person.”

Italians, aroused by the events in Hungary, for the most part rejoiced in this rebuke to the commissar. But one official in the Foreign Office sighed: “The presence of Suslov at the congress would have been an embarrassment to [Italy’s Red Boss] Togliatti, because it would have been clear evidence of Togliatti’s subjection to Moscow, and to the toughest Stalinist in Europe. Togliatti will find things easier without him.” As for fears that Suslov’s presence might provoke anti-Russian demonstrations, a Western diplomat cracked: “A little pushing around wouldn’t hurt him.”